(HealthLine News) Twenty years ago, Dr. Alan Tyndall, a rheumatologist at University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland, was faced with giving a 37-year-old mother a grim diagnosis.
Scleroderma, the autoimmune disease that pumps excess collagen into the body, was turning her pulmonary arteries into stone.
The disease would be fatal. Even a lung transplant couldn’t save her.
So Tyndall and his colleagues, including hematologist Dr. Alois Gratwohl, came up with a bold plan.
They reasoned that since the root of the problem was malfunctioning immune cells, maybe those cells should be annihilated.
In other words, they decided to purposely destroy the woman’s immune system.
Of course, they couldn’t take down the offending immune system and leave her with no defenses against future infections. They would have to rebuild it from the ground up.
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